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Roast Sucking-pig, a LA Provencale

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Roast Sucking-pig, a LA Provencale

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Roast the chestnuts and remove their husks while hot.

  2. Pound the chestnuts in a mortar with butter and rub through a wire sieve.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the chestnut puree with chives, basil, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and egg yolks.

  4. Mix well and use to fill the paunch of a plump sucking-pig.

  5. Roast the pig as directed.

  6. Cut the pig and place it on a dish, garnishing with a border of gratin tomatoes and pouring sauce underneath.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Basil + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Chestnut + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Basil + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, chive, basil, parsley, thyme, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Chickpeafits about as well
  2. Chestnutthe original
  3. Lentilsfits about as well
  4. Black-eyed peafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, chive, basil, parsley, thyme, nutmeg, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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